From Broke to Bread

I’m broke. The long and short of it is that I severed a long-term relationship with my live-in boyfriend, moved in to a household with four other women, and am still waiting for the landlord of my last apartment to return my securtiy deposit.

I’m the first to admit that I’m a bit of an elitist when it comes to food. My compulsions about buying local and/or organic whenever possible translates for many into ill-allocated funds, frivolous foolishness concerning my body’s essential nutrients. On some level I can accept that mode of thinking, but it doesn’t mean I’m going to cozy up with a value meal anytime soon.

In a nutshell, I’m trying to accept, appreciate, and feel satfisfied by whatever food I’m offered, but the flipside is that I also want to support the spaces and people who leave Earth’s medicine as unadulterated as possible. Plus, good food just tastes…good! Give me something whole and complete and unpackaged and I’ll give you a meal fit for royalty but humble enough to impress the most finicky family.

But, I have one prepared food weakness. Fresh baked bakery bread. In a typical week I splurge on a loaf. Although I live with four other women, I’m the only one who feasts on that one loaf of bread. Roughly it costs me four or five dollars. For many, that one loaf of bread is an expensive loaf of bread. For me, it is an expensive loaf of bread.

But I indulge – when I can – because food it one of my few indulgences and if I’m going to buy something pre-made then I want to know it was made with as few and as quality ingredients as possible.

Mid-month, suddenly the contents of the fridge were dwindling as well as the contents of my bank account. If I was going to survive (and I use the term “survive” loosely here) I needed to start thinking creatively (read: frugally). And that’s where the good old pantry fit in.

If I played my cards right, I could make it through to the end of the month with what food I had left in the fridge, freezer, and pantry with the help of one basic staple. Bread!

I had two options: buy a loaf or make one. In the freezer I found all-puporse flour, whole wheat flour, and bread flour. Sweeteners crowded the cupboards and I even uncovered packets of yeast and a few eggs in the fridge.

In spite of eighty-plus degree weather in the blue flame of August, this impending sense of financial oppression had propelled me to actually consider baking a bread. A yeast bread no less. Simply translated, this meant at least a two hour commitment to a kitchen, and ultimately to a kitchen with the oven set to 375 for an hour.

Sure, I’ve baked bread before, but the relentless August heat and oppressive Pittsburgh humidity wasn’t the most encouraging for it. It didn’t take long for this creative solution for saving money to become a task. What kind of crazy would I be to commit myself to a 375 degree kitchen in the heat and humidity? Not to mention the amount of time a homebaked bread would need. In the back of my mind the idea lingered, but the reality of store-bought bread was looming near -

until I read my friend Fiona’s Facebook post. She was broke and owed an oxorbitant amount of moola to her bank for overdraft fees. $108 to be exact. (Thanks to yoga, a small part of me recognized the auspiciousness of this otherwise arbitrary detail.) I didn’t hesitate to suggest a communion of friends after work to bake and break bread together and enjoy it with a modest glass of red wine. For me, this union of bread and wine and friendship smacked of celebration. Blame it on the part of me who’s Italian or the part of me who’s Christian, it doesn’t matter. If it wasn’t for my family’s cultural/religious influence, that little loaf of bread never would have happened. The $9 bottle of wine was just a necessary consequence.

Conceived around 10pm, the bread wasn’t ready to eat until nearly 1 in the morning, but while we mixed and leavened and kneaded and formed and baked, we laughed and snacked and savored. Housemates came and went but not without offering their own “2 cents”; one in particular was especially excited about helping punch down the bread after its initial rise.

Kristin flipped through magazines while Fiona expounded on the lack of shadow and contour under the arms of the Marie Claire cover model (a result of air brushing). We attempted a game of Scrabble, asked the Tarot deck for direction, and listened to Fela Kuti, Eno, and Coil.

Three hours later it was time. The perfectly imperfect rectangular loaf of Oat Bread (recipe coutesy of Deborah Madison’s “Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone”) slipped unprodded from the loaf pan. We scarcely had the patience to let it cool.

Initially I suggested an assortment of decadent toppings – miscellaneous condiments and fruits found scattered throughout the fridge: melted chocolate, blueberries, fig preserves, almond butter, grated cheddar, but ultimately we opted for the simplest variations. On our first slices we slathered butter and honey and our second, cream cheese and smoked salmon.

Although our little bread making excursion did not result in Swiss bank accounts or greater financial security, for the better part of four hours we were able to forget about our problems and indulge in the wealth of what we did have: decent wine, good food, and great friends. For that little wedge of time, one sixth of one day, I could want for nothing else.